Taylor Kitsch Goes Bang Bang

The release of The Bang Bang Club, a film about four South African photographers who documented the violence roiling the post apartheid country in the early 90's, rings especially timely given this week's tragedy in Libya. The film, starring Ryan Phillipe, Taylor Kitsch, Frank Rautenbach and Malin Akerman, reveals the personal and physical consequences suffered by combat journalists in the field. Shot by South African director Steven Silver, the movie's a kinetic experience imbued with the energy of its setting in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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For Silver, who was a student activist during the conflict, recreating the events accurately was key. "One of the decisions I made was to shoot in the exact location where those incidents took place...The people who lived in those neighborhoods remembered. So the extras—they aren't extras, they are the people living in those neighborhoods. The reason some of those scenes work so well is that the people in them are remembering rather than acting. " While the scenery and iconic imagery were carefully reconstructed, Silver didn't restrict himself when it came to the cast. "I didn't really care if they looked like the real [people]—but in the end they morphed into them. "

Kitsch underwent the greatest transformation as the charming yet conflicted photographer Kevin Carter. The Friday Night Lights star had to physically embody the emotional cost of being a combat photojournalist, as well as a drug addict—a dangerous combination that led to the actor dropping thirty pounds of muscle. "I think the physicality of it—you feel smaller. Even unconsciously—it changes your walk. It changes the clothing I wore. I loved that part of it. It's just enveloping yourself in the story."

While his physical challenges were substantial, Kitsch also faced a few technical difficulties in playing a Pulitzer prize winning photographer. "I was intimidated [by the camera]. It's like looking at a guitar like `Man, I wish I could play that.' That was me with a film camera." In order to accurately get his shooting technique down, Kitsch began taking actual photos while filming. "Within a month and hundreds of rolls later—you're judging light by looking up. I [was] so unconscious with that thing because I'd done it a thousand times."

It was, needless to say, quite different than playing Tim Riggins. "There's a thing [someone said] that Kev was a like a big kid and that helped me so much. With Riggins it was an undertone—it was very intrinsic. But [with Kevin] I never felt that I could be big enough, because that's who Kev was...what a great fucking character."